How many entrepreneurs are universities turning out?

Rajeeb Dey started his own business while studying at Oxford. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

Entrepreneurship seems to be the government's favourite word. Just last week, David Cameron declared: "The future of our economy depends on a new generation of entrepreneurs coming up with ideas, resolving to make them a reality and having the vision to create wealth and jobs." He added that the government was doing "everything possible" to encourage people to start businesses.

A search of the online parliamentary database seems to back that up: it reveals 4,400 references to entrepreneurs in debate in the Houses of Lords and Commons and in Committee reports since the election in May. With fewer jobs and the country's enormous deficit, the government reckons that discovering the next Richard Branson – or even better, a whole lot of them – could really help.

Where better to inspire entrepreneurship than on university campuses? Indeed, enterprise is a buzzword there, too. Nearly every institution now runs its own entrepreneurship society, with business start-up competitions and speakers who have been there, made their million, and now offer advice. But universities say there's a problem: since official graduate employment figures fail to show how many graduates have gone on to start their own businesses, their success at turning out entrepreneurs is being overlooked, and students are being misled.

The government's key statistic – the Destinations of Leavers of Higher Education (DLHE) data put out each year by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) – lists the number and percentage of students employed full-time and part-time, those working unpaid, and those who are self-employed or freelance. The latter would include most entrepreneurs, and indeed the last six years have seen a 46% jump in the number of graduates describing themselves as self-employed or freelance. It has risen from 4,190 in 2002-03 – or 2.9% of employed graduates leaving university – to 6,130, or 4.1%, in 2008-09.

Universities specialising in enterprise say that unless Hesa adds a category specifically asking graduates whether they have started their own businesses, the work of their students and academics is being under-represented. "Institutions that specialise in helping students to develop entrepreneurial skills are treated unfairly in league tables," says Professor Ruth Farwell, vice-chancellor of Buckinghamshire New University and chair of Guild HE, an umbrella group for 32 universities and higher education colleges.

"When prospective students and their parents and careers advisers start comparing institutions, they have to absorb a lot of information about a lot of different courses, and many of them will make judgments based on publicly available employment data. But without breaking out entrepreneur statistics, the figures can be misleading, meaning students may be missing out on courses that represent exactly what they want to do," Farwell adds.

Universities also point out that more research and data on the number of graduate entrepreneurs would help them to work out how successful they have been at developing students' business nous.

"We know from an institutional perspective that what we're doing to help prepare students ... is having an effect – we've seen students start up successful businesses – but we would really benefit from a way to compare that nationwide," says Tim Barnes, director of University College London's enterprise department.

"That way, we could see which programmes work the best – which is especially important in the difficult financial climate: we need as much bang as we can get for our buck."

A spokesman for Hesa conceded that, as it stands, the annual survey "does not provide sufficient detail to specifically identify the sub-category of self-employed leavers who start up their own businesses".

The spokesman said Hesa was undertaking a review of the DLHE data collection, but said that did not, as yet, include the idea of providing more detail on entrepreneurs. "The specific issue of identification of graduates starting up their own businesses has not been raised by members of the current review group or during preliminary discussions," he said. Hesa added that another piece of research, the Business and Community Interaction Survey, looks at the number of start-ups by students and university staff, but admitted that the survey was far less high profile.

At UCL, Barnes points out that one of the issues may be the difficulty of collecting such data. The DLHE survey is carried out six months after graduation when, he says, it may be too early to say whether a graduate was starting up a business. "So it might be helpful to know what happens two or three years after graduation."

Whatever the logistics, students and graduates are also calling for the government to note the importance of evaluating universities' skills at developing students' sense of enterprise. Rajeeb Dey, 24, started his business Enternships.com – which finds internships for students with entrepreneurial companies – while still studying economics and management at Oxford. He adds: "If we are serious about the government's so called enterprise-led recovery, it is important that we send students a clear message that entrepreneurship is a career path in its own right.

"That should be clearly reflected in the DLHE figures by highlighting the number of graduates who set up their own businesses upon graduation. With tuition fees on the rise, students should assess not only if their university education will help them to get a job, but also whether their time at university will help them to develop and nurture entrepreneurial skills and support them in launching start-ups."